Four layers are generally present in the construction of a conventional, prerecorded, optical disc. A first layer is usually made from optical grade, polycarbonate resin. This layer is manufactured by well-known techniques that usually begin by injection or compression molding the resin into a disc. The surface of the disc is molded or stamped with extremely small and precisely located pits and lands. These pits and lands have a predetermined size and, as explained below, are ultimately the vehicles for storing information on the disc.
After stamping, an optically reflective layer is placed over the information pits and lands. The reflective layer is usually made of aluminum or an aluminum alloy and is typically between about 40 to about 100 nanometers (nm) thick. The reflective layer is usually deposited by one of many well-known vapor deposition techniques such as sputtering or thermal evaporation. Kirk-Othmer, Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology, 3rd ed. Vol. 10, pp. 247 to 283, offers a detailed explanation of these and other deposition techniques such as glow discharge, ion plating, and chemical vapor deposition, and this specification hereby incorporates that disclosure by reference.
Next, a solvent-based or a UV (ultraviolet) curing-type resin is applied over the reflective layer, which is usually followed by a label. The third layer protects the reflective layer from handling and the ambient environment. And the label identifies the particular information that is stored on the disc, and sometimes, may include artwork.
The information pits residing between the polycarbonate resin and the reflective layer usually take the form of a continuous spiral. The spiral typically begins at an inside radius and ends at an outside radius. The distance between any 2 spirals is called the “track pitch” and is usually about 1.6 microns. The length of one pit or land in the direction of the track is from about 0.9 to about 3.3 microns. All of these details are commonly known for compact audio discs and reside in a series of specifications that were first proposed by Philips N V of Holland and Sony of Japan as standards for the industry.
The disc is read by pointing a laser beam through the optical grade polycarbonate and onto the reflective layer with sufficiently small resolution to focus on the information pits. The pits have a depth of about ¼ of the wavelength of the laser light, and the light generally has a wavelength in the range of about 780 to 820 nanometers, although wavelengths as short as 400 nanometers are also used. Destructive (dark) or constructive (bright) interference of the laser light is then produced as the laser travels along the spiral track, focusing on an alternating stream of pits and lands in its path.
This on and off change of light intensity from dark to bright or from bright to dark forms the basis of a digital data stream of 1 and 0's. When there is no light intensity change in a fixed time interval, the digital signal is “0,” and when there is light intensity change from either dark to bright or bright to dark, the digital signal is “1.” The continuous stream of ones and zeros that results is then electronically decoded and presented in a format that is meaningful to the user such as music or computer programming data.
As a result, it is important to have a highly reflective coating on the disc to reflect the laser light from the disc and onto a detector in order to read the presence of an intensity change. In general, the reflective layer is usually aluminum, copper, silver, or gold, all of which have a high optical reflectivity of more than 80 percent. Aluminum and aluminum alloys are commonly used because they have a comparatively lower cost, adequate corrosion resistance, and are easily placed onto the polycarbonate disc.
Occasionally and usually for cosmetic reasons, a gold or copper based alloy is used to offer the consumer a “gold” colored disc. Although gold naturally offers a rich color and satisfies all the functional requirements of a highly reflective layer, it is comparatively much more expensive than aluminum. Therefore, frequently a copper-based alloy that contains zinc or tin is sometimes used to produce the gold colored layer. But unfortunately, the exchange is not truly satisfactory because the copper alloy's corrosion resistance, in general, is considered worse than aluminum, which results in a disc that has a shorter life span than one with an aluminum reflective layer.
For the convenience of the reader, additional details in the manufacture and operation of an optically readable storage system can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,998,239 to Strandjord et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 4,709,363 to Dirks et al., the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
Another type of disc in the compact disc family that has become popular is the recordable compact disc or “CD-R.” This disc is similar to the CD described earlier, but it has a few changes. The recordable compact disc begins with a continuous spiral groove instead of a continuous spiral of pits and has a layer of organic dye between the polycarbonate substrate and the reflective layer. The disc is recorded by periodically focusing a laser beam into the grooves as the laser travels along the spiral track. The laser heats the dye to a high temperature, which in turn places pits in the groove that coincide with an input data stream of ones and zeros by periodically deforming and decomposing the dye.
For the convenience of the reader, additional details regarding the operation and construction of these recordable discs can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,325,351 to Uchiyama et al., and U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,391,462; 5,415,914; and 5,419,939 to Arioka et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 5,620,767 to Harigaya et al., the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated into this specification by reference.
The key component of a CD-R disc is the organic dye, which is made from solvent and one or more organic compounds from the cyanine, phthalocyanine or azo family. The disc is normally produced by spin coating the dye onto the disc and sputtering the reflective layer over the dye after the dye is sufficiently dry. But because the dye may contain halogen ions or other chemicals that can corrode the reflective layer, many commonly used reflective layer materials such as aluminum may not be suitable to give the CD-R disc a reasonable life span. So being, frequently gold must be used to manufacture a recordable CD. But while gold satisfies all the functional requirements of CD-R discs, it is a very expensive solution.
Recently, other types of recordable optical disks have been developed. These optical disks use a phase-change or magneto-optic material as the recording medium. An optical laser is used to change the phase or magnetic state (microstructural change) of the recording layer by modulating a beam focused on the recording medium while the medium is rotated to produce microstructural changes in the recording layer. During playback, changes in the intensity of light from the optical beam reflected through the recording medium are sensed by a detector. These modulations in light intensity are due to variations in the microstructure of the recording medium produced during the recording process. Some phase-change and/or magneto-optic materials may be readily and repeatedly transformed from a first state to a second state and back again with substantially no degradation. These materials may be used as the recording media for a compact disc-rewritable disc, commonly known as CD-RW.
To record and read information, phase change discs utilize the recording layer's ability to change from a first dark to a second light phase and back again. Recording on these materials produces a series of alternating dark and light spots according to digital input data introduced as modulations in the recording laser beam. These light and dark spots on the recording medium correspond to 0's and 1's in terms of digital data. The digitized data is read using a low-power laser focused along the track of the disc to play back the recorded information. The laser's power is low enough so that it does not further change the state of the recording media but is powerful enough so that the variations in reflectivity of the recording medium may be easily distinguished by a detector. The recording medium may be erased for re-recording by focussing a laser of intermediate power on the recording medium. This returns the recording medium layer to its original or erased state. A more detailed discussion of the recording mechanism of optically recordable media can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,741,603; 5,498,507; and 5,719,006 assigned to the Sony Corporation, the TDK Corporation, and the NEC Corporation, all of Tokyo, Japan, respectively, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Still another type of disc in the optimal disc family that has become popular is a prerecorded optical disc called the digital video disc or “DVD.” This disc has two halves. Each half is made of polycarbonate resin that has been injection or compression molded with pit information and then sputter coated with a reflective layer, as described earlier. These two halves are then bonded or glued together with a UV curing resin or a hot melt adhesive to form the whole disc. The disc can then be played from both sides as contrasted from the compact disc or CD where information is usually obtained only from one side. The size of a DVD is about the same as a CD, but the information density is considerably higher. The track pitch is about 0.7 micron and the length of the pits and lands is from approximately 0.3 to 1.4 microns.
One variation of the DVD family of discs is the DVD-dual layer disc. This disc also has two information layers; however, both are played back from one side. In this arrangement, the high reflectivity layer is usually the same as that previously described. But the second layer is only semi-reflective with a reflectivity in the range of approximately 18 to 30 percent. In addition to reflecting light, this second layer must also pass a substantial amount of light so that the laser beam can reach the highly reflective layer underneath and then reflect back through the semi-reflective layer to the signal detector.
In a continued attempt to increase the storage capacity of optical discs, a multi-layer disc can be constructed as indicated in the publication “SPIE Conference Proceeding Vol. 2890, page 2–9, November, 1996” where a tri-layer or a quadri-layer optical disc was revealed, the disclosure of which is specifically incorporated into this specification by reference.
All the data layers were played back from one side of the disc using laser light at 650 nm wavelength. A double-sided tri-layered read-only-disc that includes a total of six layers can have a storage capacity of about 26 Giga bytes of information.
Currently, the potential choice of the semi-reflective layer is either gold or silicon with a thickness in the range of 5 to 70 nanometers, as discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,171,392 to Iida et al., the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference. Gold, when sufficiently thin, will both reflect and transmit light, has outstanding corrosion resistance, and is relatively easy to sputter into a coating of uniform thickness. But once again, it is also comparatively more expensive than other metals. Silicon is a reasonable alternative to gold, but because it is a semiconductor, its sputtering yield and sputtering rate are significantly lower than gold when applied with the same power. Moreover, silicon also has a tendency to react with oxygen and nitrogen during sputtering, which introduces a whole additional set of problems. For example, usually the application of silicon requires a more complicated sputtering apparatus than one that is normally required to apply other reflective metals. And as a result, neither gold nor silicon offers an ideal semi-reflective layer for use in this type of disc.
Recent advances in the development of particular silver alloy thin films for use as both semi-reflective and highly reflective layers in DVD-9s has made it feasible to create tri-layer and even quadruple-layer optical discs with all playback information layers on the same side of the disc. See for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,007,889, and 6,280,811 to Nee incorporated herein in their entirety. Thus multiple-layer disc can be constructed and manufactured at low cost. Combined with objective lens having a numerical aperture (NA) of 0.60, and playback lasers having a wavelength of about 650 nm, multiple-layer optical storage devices with the capacity to store 14 gigabytes of information (DVD-14) or 18 gigabytes (DVD-18) of information storage capacity can be made.
For the convenience of the reader, additional details regarding the manufacture and construction of DVD discs can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,382 to Florczak et al. the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
More recently, a blue light emitting laser diode with wavelength of 400 nm has been made commercially available. The new laser will enable much denser digital video disc data storage. While current DVD using 650 nm red laser can store 4.7 GB per side. The new blue laser will enable 12 GB per side, enough storage space for about 6 hours of standard-resolution video and sound. With a multi-layer disc, there is enough capacity for a featured movie in the high-definition digital video format.
Various formats for the next generation optical discs have been proposed. One of these is referred to so as a “Blu-ray” disc. The Blu-ray disc system is characterized by a playback laser operating at a wavelength of about 405 nm (blue light) and an objective lens with a numerical aperture of 0.85. The storage capacity of this device, used with one information layer, is estimated to be about 25 gigabytes for the prerecorded format. Such devices have track pitch values in the 0.32 μm range and channel bit length on the order of 0.05 μm.
Because the focal depth of an objective lens with a NA of 0.85 is typically less than one micron, the tolerance of the optical path length variation is drastically reduced relative to currently used systems. Thus a cover layer about 100 microns thick (the distance is measured from the surface of the disc to the information layer) has been proposed. The variation of the thickness of this cover layer is extremely critical to the success of this system. For example, a 2 or 3 micron thick variation in the cover layer will introduce very high spherical aberration in the playback signal, potentially degrading the signal to an unacceptable low level.
Another major problem with the Blu-ray format is that the current generation of production equipment used for DVDs can not be used to produce discs with the Blu-ray format, because the proposed format is too different from currently used DVD format. The need to invest in new equipment to manufacture Blu-ray discs substantially increases the cost of making the Blu-ray disc, and presents another obstacle to adopting the Blu-ray disc system as the standard for the next generation of DVD.
In part, because of the aforementioned problems associated with the Blu-ray disc, another format for the next generation of DVD has been proposed. This proposed format is sometimes referred to as the “Advanced Optical Disc” (AOD).
The AOD format preserves some of the features of the currently used DVD, for example, an AOD comprises two 0.6 mm thick half-discs glued together to create a symmetrical structure. The proposed AOD system uses a playback laser with a wavelength of 405 nm and an objective lens with a NA of about 0.65. The storage capacity of the prerecorded type of AOD disc with one information layer is about 15 gigabytes. Although manufacturing an AOD disc is less complicated and less challenging than manufacturing a Blu-ray disc, AOD suffers one drawback. The playback signal quality of an AOD disc is strongly dependent upon the flatness of the disc. In order to deal with the variation of disc flatness introduced in the mass production of AOD discs, a tilt servo mechanism in the player is most likely required. The need for this mechanism will increase the cost of players designed to read AOD discs.
Currently, there is an interest in adapting CD-RW techniques to the DVD field to produce a rewritable DVD (DVD-RW) and next generation phase-change rewritable discs such as Blu-ray or AOD. Some difficulties in the production of a DVD-RW have arisen due to the higher information density requirements of the DVD format. For example, the reflectivity of the reflective layer must be increased relative to that of the standard DVD reflective layer to accommodate the reading, writing, and erasing requirements of the DVD-RW format. Also, the thermal conductivity of the reflective layer must also be increased to adequately dissipate the heat generated by both the higher laser power requirements of writing and erasing information and the microstructural changes occurring during the information transfer process. The potential choice of the reflective layer is currently pure gold, pure silver and aluminum alloys. Gold seems to have sufficient reflectivity, thermal conductivity, and corrosion resistance properties to work in a DVD-RW disk. Additionally, gold is relatively easy to sputter into a coating of uniform thickness. But once again, gold is also comparatively more expensive than other metals, making the DVD-RW format prohibitively expensive. Pure silver has higher reflectivity and thermal conductivity than gold, but its corrosion resistance is relatively poor as compared to gold. Aluminum alloy's reflectivity and thermal conductivity is considerably lower than either gold or silver, and therefore is not necessarily a good choice for the reflective layer in DVD-RW or DVD+RW.
Therefore, what is needed are alloys that have the advantages of gold when used as a reflective layers or as a semi-reflective layers in an optical storage media, but are not as expensive as gold. One aspect of this invention addresses that need.